Review: Point of View NVTV

Introduction

ATI's All-In-Wonder and TV Wonder, along with Hauppage's WinTV, are arguably the most popular TV tuner products for the PC. In the absence of sales figures to dispute otherwise, I'd hazard a guess that most users unfamiliar with PC-based television, that are looking to get a product to do so, will find the ATI or Hauppage products first.

However despite those arguable market leaders, the PC TV market is awash with choice and possible purchases, from the low end of the spectrum - basic TV tuners and little extra software - right up to the high-end where the tuners do digital tuning and you get slick integrated full-screen PVR software that also manages your entire media collection.

Somewhere in the middle slots NVIDIA's NVTV. If the NVIDIA Personal Cinema is a match for ATI's All-In-Wonder, combining graphics card, media tuners and software, the NVTV is analogous to ATI's TV Wonder, ATI's standalone media tuner and software. Basically it's the TV tuner decoupled from a Personal Cinema product, bundled with controlling software. You're then free to augment your own (supported) graphics card to the NVTV in order make use of it.

With that in mind, you should start to see NVTV products from a few of NVIDIA's partners. The first of which that we've been privvy to at HEXUS comes from U.K. newcomers Point of View. We covered their GeForce FX 5900XT recently and it was an excellent example of non-generic execution, the board design and aesthetic, along with the game bundle, making it stand out from the crowd.